MCPAMine Clearance Planning Agency
Afghan humanitarian mine actionSince 1990
Afghan humanitarian mine action · since 1990
For more than thirty years, MCPA’s Afghan teams have found and removed the explosives left by war in all 34 provinces. They have cleared 128.5M m², destroyed 266,480 explosive items and taught 888,824 people how to stay safe.
How land is released
From a suspected minefield to fields, homes and a school: the stages that return land to use.
An illustration, not a map of a real place.
In 1989, mines and explosive remnants of war killed or injured an average of twenty Afghans every day.
That December, MCPA began as a two-person cell under the United Nations, trialling the survey methods then being introduced in Afghanistan. Its founding job was the question every clearance depends on: where exactly is the danger, and where is it not?
On 15 March 1990 the cell became an Afghan non-governmental organisation, with a budget of USD 495,000. The survey it pioneered is known today as Non-Technical Survey; the data system it built that year became the model for national mine-action data.
The work
Deminers paint danger red and the cleared path white. Everything MCPA does moves ground from one to the other, and then back into use.
Teams talk with the women and men who know the land, study the records and inspect suspected areas. Land with no evidence of danger is cancelled and released.
Manual deminers, machines and ordnance-disposal specialists clear confirmed hazards lane by lane. Quick response teams answer hotline calls.
Cleared land is checked, recorded and formally handed back for farming, homes, schools and roads.
Until a team reaches a village, knowledge keeps people alive. Paired women and men educators teach families to recognise, avoid and report explosive items.
The record
Cumulative, from 1990 to May 2026, as recorded in MCPA's programme records.
Source: MCPA Organisational Profile (2026) · cumulative to May 2026 · about our sources
Field stories
Eight accounts from MCPA's own field reports. Nothing in them is invented, and each says what was finished and what was still planned.
Clearance · Shamati (1) · Laghman · 2025
More than 16 million square metres around a village of 1,700 people were contaminated. In eight weeks, six teams cleared the 3.6 million the community needed most: the paths, the plots, the ground around the schools, the stone mine.
Completed · handed over 12 July 2025Nationwide reach
MCPA has delivered mine action in every province and all eight national mine-action regions, from clearance around a single village to non-technical survey across 26 provinces at once.
Reach is not clearance. This map shows where MCPA has worked. Contamination remains across Afghanistan, and new hazards still surface: floods move buried ordnance, and families returning home meet ground whose history they do not know.
Region-specific projects
West: covered by national survey programmes. Plus 36 nationwide and multi-province programmes, up to 26 provinces at once.
Explore regions and projectsFeedback and complaints
Anyone affected by MCPA's work, including community members, partners and our own staff, can raise a concern or a complaint, or tell us what we could do better. Messages go straight to our head office. You can write in Dari, Pashto or English.
For partners and donors
By the Directorate of Mine Action Coordination; registered with the Ministry of Economy, No. 252.
Procedures aligned with the Afghanistan Mine Action Standards and IMAS, with external monitoring in the field.
Every project carries its own donor-mandated external audit. USD 123.15M delivered since 1990.
A computerised information system since 1990, the model for national mine-action data.
